


The Weapon-Dance

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Canon Era, Cultural Differences, Dancing, Imperialism, M/M, Military, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1694357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dance has the power to dispel the stress of an inspection-visit by a disapproving senior officer — and even to spark a flame in the midst of dread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weapon-Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



> Very slight canon divergence (too slight to tag it as such, really) in which Hilarion and Lucius participate in the dance, rather than sit with Alexios, Montanus, and Kaeso. No details about ancient Celtic weapon dances have come down to us; the ones in my fic are hypothetical, using the [_Ghillie Callum_](http://www.toeandheel.com/celticspiritdance/dances/swords.htm) (Scottish sword dance) for inspiration.
> 
> Thanks to [Smillaraaq](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Smillaraaq/pseuds/Smillaraaq) for beta’ing this for me.

Hilarion’s head was moving gently back and forth while the back of it still rested against the wall he leant on. Smiling crookedly, his light-coloured eyes on Alexios, he asked, “How _did_ the Empire manage before it had you, Sir?”

It was, of course, a jest. They’d just had word that their new Praepositus was coming for a three-day visit of inspection, in the depths of autumn no less. A mild autumn, to be sure. But Hilarion had likely been right when he’d said that the man was the rigidly virtuous sort not to be deterred by the chance of foul weather. Alexios’s plans amounted to sending out a hunting party for fresh meat, arranging a military drill and a show of weapon-dancing for the new Commander, inviting a few Votadini of high rank to join them for the occasion, and praying that the bath-house heating didn’t fail.

But, Alexios thought, there was more than a jest in Hilarion’s eyes. At the start of the season, when Alexios had complained to him in private about the uselessness of reporting to anyone but an old Wolf at Bremenium, Hilarion had laughed and said, “Spoken like a true Frontier Wolf yourself — and you not yet a year with the Family.” There had been warmth in his voice, then; there was warmth in his eyes, now.

Alexios met his gaze with equal warmth and smiled. That was when he felt it: the air seeming to crackle between them, as if it were a muggy summer night with a storm off the Oceanus Hibernicus about to break over the moors. He caught his breath quietly.

Hilarion’s expression didn’t change. But Alexios saw, despite the darkness of the hour and the shadows in the mess room that the smoky lamps couldn’t fully chase away, his senior centenarius’s pupils widen.

Then Lucius said, “I’ll have a few men ride out in the morning with the invitation to Cunorix, Sir.”

Alexios swung his head in the junior centenarius’s direction, both disappointed and relieved. “Thank you, Lucius.”

“I’ll organise the hunting party,” Hilarion said, pulling himself unhurriedly away from the wall and strolling toward the door. “Perhaps I’ll join it myself.”

“And enjoy a distraction from the dread of waiting for our new Commander’s arrival, while I remain immersed in it?” Alexios demanded, though his tone was light. He himself, Lucius, and Kaeso could well enough direct the Wolves remaining at Castellum in cleaning and other preparations on the day that Hilarion and the others took to the hunt.

“The privileges of rank don’t always outweigh the burdens of leadership, Sir,” Hilarion said, his tone just as light, as he ducked the lintel of the door to the mess room.

 

“You were right,” Alexios muttered five evenings later, far out of earshot of Praepositus Montanus and his men.

“Aye me, would that I hadn’t been, Sir,” Hilarion sighed. His smile was deceptively bland, as it often was, and there was a cold anger in his eyes. Whatever had flared between the two of them was, for now at least, dampened by circumstances.

“The Lady,” Alexios said, giving voice to his own rage. “What in the black name of Ahriman does Montanus care whether we show her honour? Lucius is as Christian as Constantine, and _he_ doesn’t cavil to touch the stone!”

“Lucius isn’t a bitter failure, Sir, with less power than he thinks he’s earned and a need to wield it that all the world will know.” Hilarion turned his head and spat on the ground.

Strong words for a man who tended to irony and implication, Alexios thought — especially in the presence of his commanding officer. But he didn’t even consider rebuking Hilarion for the disrespectful observation. Instead he shook his own head slowly. “What happened to the Rome who trod lightly on the customs of the peoples she conquered?”

Hilarion did not reply. When Alexios glanced up at him, he was staring into the distance, his smile had faded, and his eyes were if anything colder than before. Alexios, sensing he had crossed a line of some sort, shifted his tone into that of quiet, detached authority.

“Are the plans for the practice-ground show and the weapon-dance in place, Hilarion?”

“They are, Sir,” Hilarion said, his own tone a shade curter than usual, though not so much that Alexios could call it out as surly.

“Good. They’ll do wonders for our cheer, even if they don’t impress Montanus. The Votadini, I’m sure, will draw the appropriate lessons from both results.”

The corners of Hilarion’s lips twitched. “Oh, I’m certain the Commander will be impressed, Sir. If not in the manner to which he’s accustomed.”

 

The evening after the next was, if anything, tenser, even more so than the intervening one.

On the second day of Montanus’s visit, the morning arrival of Cunorix and his household warriors in their blazing finery had buoyed Alexios’s spirits, as had the afternoon show on the practice-ground. The drill had also, as he’d predicted, lifted the morale of the Wolves as one, the disdain of the Praepositus regardless. Even Alexios’s chill of foreboding as he’d watched Cunorix eye the Commander’s magnificent bay stallion didn’t completely dispel his good mood. And the grand dinner in the cross-hall of the Principia, with fragrant cherry smoke wreathing the rafters, had left him as mellow as if it’d been served with good wine and not the near-vinegar issued by the Army.

Then had come the discussion of the horse-tax, and then that of horse-breeding. Alexios had been expecting Cunorix’s polite request that Montanus lend him the bay stallion, that he might breed it to his own half-Arab mare. He’d assumed the Praepositus wouldn’t treat the request with the most profound respect. The man’s utter lack of grace in his refusal, however, had startled Alexios, who’d immediately thought that Montanus had been relegated to an outpost at the edge of the Empire for very good reason.

He’d been relieved to hear the horn of the Second Watch sound almost immediately, breaking the tense silence that had fallen and calling Hilarion away from the Principia. The urge to exchange a hooded look with his senior centenarius had been powerful, and though he had resisted it, neither had he needed that temptation. Especially not after the flash of devilment in Connla’s eyes had lifted the hairs on the back of Alexios’s neck.

And today had come Montanus’s rebuke to Alexios for reiterating his worry over the death of the Weaver of Tales. It had drained the last remnants of any pleasure Alexios had taken from the incidental delights of the inspection-visit.

But, right now, about to commence was the last of those delights: the weapon-dance. To spin and stamp with blades in hand honed a man’s skill with them, his speed in battle, his control of his own body as surely as any arms-drill did. But, as well, it stirred the blood of those who beheld it, and, even more so, of those who danced it.

The only check on Alexios’s enthusiasm was the fact that he would not be dancing it tonight. With Montanus’s none-too-subtle threat to his position fresh in his mind, he thought it best to remain seated on the hay-bale to the right of the great chair that had been set out for the Praepositus. On the bale to Montanus’s left sat Kaeso, who acquitted himself well enough in battle but whose nimbleness in dance was not overly impressive.

Hilarion and Lucius, however, would be among the dancers, as they had planned since before Montanus had arrived at Castellum. Alexios rather doubted it would make an iota of difference to how Montanus regarded them, or him, or the Frontier Wolves as a whole. Let them all release three days’ pent-up tension in dance — and let them all show their Praepositus their respect in the way of the Wolves.

And that was when he heard, as if cued by his thoughts, the soft and sleepy stirrings of the deerskin drums.

The Wolves had ringed the Dancing Ground with torches; between the edges of the nimbus cast by each, shadows swirled and shifted. Out of those shadows, far across from the waggon-shelter in whose entrance Montanus, Alexios, and Kaeso sat, stepped twelve men in two rows of six.

Nothing about their garb suggested at anything impressive about to happen: Though it was all clean, it was the usual worn leather tunics, cross-gartered breeks, and rawhide boots. The eyes of the spectators, instead, gravitated to the dirk held by each man in either hand, off which the torch-light flickered waveringly.

The twelve moved as one to the centre of the Dancing Ground and spread out in a circle, their feet planted apart, until each could just cross the tips of his dirks with those of his neighbours. On one side of the circle stood Lucius; at the very opposite point, Hilarion.

The murmur of the drums suddenly flared into a steady, pounding rhythm. In perfect time with it, twenty-four arms swung upward, and twenty-four blades flashed in the torch-light. The men’s arms sank gracefully, then rose once more. The metallic click of blade-tip on blade-tip as each dirk connected with that on either side was soft at first, barely audible over the drums.

The drummers picked up pace. Again and again each blade rose to catch the light, then to kiss the blade-tips on either side. As the tempo grew ever faster and the dirks turned into gleaming circles of whirling steel, Alexios found his eyes wandering to Hilarion, who stood taller than all but one of the others.

Only in three circumstances did Hilarion ever fully lose his air of nonchalance or his lounging posture: battle, drill, and dance. Alexios had no time to watch his men fight when the enemy stood before him as well. When he watched them execute practice drills, he made a point of regarding each individually, looking for weaknesses to correct, strengths to build on. And, if he were present when they danced the weapon-dance, he danced alongside them.

But now, with shadows all about him and no eyes upon him and no need to analyse, he let his gaze settle upon Hilarion.

As he almost never did, the senior centenarius stood straight as a spear: knees locked, shoulders back, head lifted. Even in the shadow-rippled light and under the leather sleeves, Alexios could see the muscles in Hilarion’s arms shift and snake as the dirks spun in his hands. His usual expression of indolence and detached amusement had given way to a rapt brightness in his eyes and a pulling at the corners of his mouth that spoke of genuine pleasure.

The drums roared under palms and the edges of hands, building to a frenetic pitch, as the deadly circles continued to spin. Suddenly each man flung both his dirks up to the night sky. They hung spinning in the air for a clear-frozen second before descending again, caught by their blades yet drawing not a drop of blood. As the drums fell silent, all twelve men went stock-still, dirks tight against their palms. All about them, voices exploded into roars of appreciation.

Though Montanus sat silent between them, Alexios’s and Kaeso’s voices were among those raised in tribute. Alexios didn’t have it in him _not_ to be roused to admiration — not only as their commander, watching them do the Third Ordo proud, but as a swordsman, watching them with a swordsman’s eye. And if there were one in particular who had caught that eye for reasons not entirely related to his skill, no-one else need know it.

The drums began to growl once more, and the twelve began to move once more — and to move more than their arms. Though the dirk-drill was impressive to behold, it was not a true dance, not like what unfolded now before hundreds of attentive eyes.

They executed the war-dances and the hunting-dances with no less precision and pride than they’d performed the dirk-drill. Shouting sharp and deep, the sounds abstracted from the rallying cries of battlefield and woodland, they hurtled across the Dancing Ground in patterns as ancient and as revered as the Lady. Their blades caught the torch-fire, shredding the darkness with red-gold flashes of light. Honed keen, unlike the dirks, these were weapons that at the slightest mis-step could have torn a dancer no less asunder.

Then all twelve stepped back into the shadows as the drumbeat softened once more. A few moments later two came forward again into the light: Lucius and Hilarion, both now unshod, moving to stand several paces apart. Each carried a sword in either hand; each lay his weapons on the ground, one sword atop and athwart the other.

As the drums beat slow and steady, each began his careful, intricate weft of steps, moving widdershins round the cross of swords, bare feet touching down in all four quarters. Never once did they touch the weapons, skirting not merely the blade-edges — well-honed, capable of severing their feet from their ankles — but any part of the swords at all. The tribes held that to so complete the dance was a harbinger of victory in coming battle. To touch or displace the swords at all, however, was ill-omened, a portent of lives lost in battle or even of defeat.

The tempo of the drums quickened, and Lucius and Hilarion, feet blurring, moved ever faster from one triangle of ground to the next. Alexios’s eyes were drawn again to the face of his senior centenarius. The light was now brighter in Hilarion’s eyes, the smile fuller on his lips, and there was a strange softness in his face. As he moved, the torch-light beat sparks of bronze from his hair like a forge-hammer. Alexios — recalling how when he himself stepped onto the Dancing Ground the beat of the drums and the calls of the others and the air charged with both would flow through him and seem to pull his well-trained muscles along — thought, He is lost to the dance.

As the drums thundered to a crescendo, both centenarii leapt into the air, each landing a pace in front of his swords, and bowed deeply in the sudden deafening hush. The men standing round the Dancing Ground burst once again into howls of exaltation, stamping the earth beneath them. Ignoring the stony figure of Montanus, Alexios rose to his feet to shout his own acclamations and beat his palms together, and Kaeso followed his lead.

Hilarion and Lucius straightened, hair matted with sweat, faces flushed with victory, smiling broadly at everyone about them — and suddenly Hilarion’s eyes were fixed to Alexios’s like an arrow through a roundel. The air between them seemed to warp and snap again, and the jolt that shot through Alexios from the soles of his feet to the top of his head left him as heated as if he’d been dancing alongside them.

He swallowed hard, then forced his gaze to Lucius, in whose face he saw nothing but pride and delight. When their eyes met, Lucius grinned, revelling in the approval of his ducenarius, and Alexios grinned back.

Both centenarii disappeared into the shadows, leaving the Dancing Ground vacant once more in the wavering light. The air had gone raw with the lateness of the hour, summoning up a mist from the estuary. The smoke of the torches curled golden round their flames. All that remained to be danced now was the complex, exultant, and deadly Dance of the Wolf Spears.

Within moments, the dancers stepped back once more onto the Dancing Ground, both centenarii reshod, all twelve men with a spear to hand. No — one man held a spear in each hand. And that man did not stop in the middle of the Ground but continued until he stood within a pace of Alexios.

“Join us, Sir?” Hilarion asked mildly, gently flicking the spare weapon in his left hand upward. He stood in silhouette between Alexios and the brazier, and Alexios could not see more than the barest outlines of his face.

For a slender moment, Alexios hesitated. He did not need to look at the man sitting to his left to know that Montanus would not approve. Montanus, who burned to make over the Frontier Wolves into soldiers indistinct from any others in the Empire. Montanus, too contemptuous of barbarians to care if he unwittingly destabilised a garrison’s relations with its neighbours. Montanus, who had threatened to demote him.

Then he rose, shrugging out of his cloak to fling it onto the hay-bale. Despite the shadows between them, he could see the grin begin on Hilarion’s face, and a mirroring one rose on his own lips as the centenarius raised his left arm and tossed him the extra spear. Alexios caught it neatly in his right hand, then followed Hilarion onto the Dancing Ground, where the eleven others had begun to form one last circle.

As the drums purred back to life, all thirteen moved forward as one, tightening the circle, stamping the beaten earth hard with their right feet and then with their left. Alexios could feel, as he always did, the Ground beneath return the beat to him, as though their steps had awakened an ancient god who slumbered under the soil.

Slowly the drumming began to gather force, like a wave as yet far off-shore. The thirteen crouched low, the tips of their spears nearly touching at the very centre of the circle, before righting their weapons: hilts against the earth, heads toward the stars.

Finally the drums erupted, and the men began to leap. One by one they flew over the crouched heads and unblunted spear-tips of their fellow dancers, landing clear, landing light, crouching once again that they might be leapt over in turn.

As he and his men whirled and leapt and thrust and advanced and retreated, Alexios’s heart and breath kept pace with the drums, no matter how fast the hands of the drummers moved. Perhaps it was his British blood calling out to meet it. Or perhaps not. The Wolves made a family of the scum and the scrapings of the Empire — Syrians and Parthians and Africans and Germans and the hard bargains of all other nations — and no Wolf from any of them could not be taught to carry himself well on the Dancing Ground.

All Alexios knew for sure was that the drum-beat seemed to haul up memories out of his marrow, ancient ones that had lain unknown to him until he’d learnt the dances from the Emperor’s own hard bargain himself. In such memories there were neither ducenarii nor centenarii nor common soldiers, neither Romans nor Britons nor men of any other lands. There were only dancers, and then not even _dancers_ in plurality, for the drum-beat drew them into a vibrating unity that would not fade until the final blow of palm on deerskin had ceased to reverberate.

And that final blow was approaching. With Lucius to his left and Hilarion to his right and five more on either side of the centenarii, Alexios turned toward the entrance of the waggon-shelter, where Kaeso sat rapt and Montanus sat utterly bored. As one the thirteen swept forward, spears levelled. At the very last moment, the drums boomed, then fell still; and they all checked, threw their heads back, uttered the mournful battle-cry of the Wolves, and tossed their spears upward in salute to catch them neatly again as they fell.

All about the Dancing Ground men roared and hooted and stamped. Kaeso’s grinning face was redder than ever as he leapt to his feet to beat his palms in acclamation one more time.

“An interesting display,” Montanus said icily, the words no more genuine than his apology to Cunorix the evening before. Though Alexios would have sworn he saw him blanch faintly at the charge of the Wolf Spears, now the Praepositus evinced the same chill ennui as before.

Alexios was too warm from exertion and jubilation for that chill to touch him. “Thank you, Sir,” he said over a gasp of breath, his broad smile undisturbed.

He turned to reseat himself on the hay-bale to the right of Montanus’s chair. Standing before him again, he realised, was Hilarion, his empty left hand extended.

“Let me take your spear for you, Sir,” Hilarion said.

As before he stood in silhouette against the brazier, his face obscured in shadow. But Alexios could hear his quickened breath, smell the clean sweat on him that must be trickling beneath his tunic as it did beneath Alexios’s own, see that he had not eased back into his usual apparent indolence but yet stood tall and straight, still flush with the rhythm of the dance and the pride of having danced it well.

And there it was, once more, that peculiar sharpness in the air between them. Alexios extended his right hand. As Hilarion took the spear from him, their fingers brushed.

That which surged through him this time rocked Alexios slightly backward on his heels. The roots of his hair seemed to crackle against his skin. His throat was suddenly dry, his palms were suddenly wet, and he… _throbbed_ , as though the drums had taken up residence inside his body.

They were subtle signs, apparent to no-one who did not know Hilarion well and was not looking at him at that moment. But he pulled his left hand back just a little too quickly as he raised his head a fraction of an inch more. And though Hilarion’s breathing remained rapid, Alexios heard, distinctly, the faint hitch in it, just short of a gasp, that owed nothing to exertion.

“Thank you, Hilarion,” Alexios said, hearing his own voice rise up rough out of his parched throat, with a deep note to it that hadn’t been there before. Hadn’t been there in a very long time.

“Sir,” Hilarion said, his own voice a shade too hoarse and a shade too deep. He dipped his head — in deference? _Not quite,_ Alexios couldn’t help but think — and turned about, heading back across the Dancing Ground where the other eleven stood.

Alexios flung up a hand to them all, in gratitude as well as dismissal. He sat down on the bale and pulled his cloak back over his shoulders, tightening it against the cold that the thickening fog had pulled up from the estuary. Under the heavy wool, sensation yet thrummed through him. He certainly did not regret that Montanus would take his leave on the morrow and that Castellum would settle back into routine. But neither could he help but think that whatever had passed between himself and Hilarion tonight might have been worth the strain of the last three days.


End file.
